Old Dominion Freight Line Q3 2021 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
October 26, 2021

Key Takeaways

  • Old Dominion delivered record Q3 revenue of $1.4 billion (up 32.3% y/y), improved its operating ratio to 72.6% (190 bps better) and reported EPS of $2.47 (up 44.4%).
  • LTL volume and yield growth were well balanced, with shipments up 13.7% and revenue per hundredweight increasing 15.7% (10.1% ex-fuel surcharge), both above 10-year sequential trends.
  • The company hired over 1,000 new full-time employees between June and September, driving a 20.9% increase in headcount vs. Q3 2020, and plans further hiring in Q4 and into 2022 to support growth and reduce reliance on third-party transportation.
  • 2021 capital expenditures are now estimated at $565 million (down $40 million on timing shifts), and OD expects to increase its 2022 CapEx to fund market-share initiatives and accelerate fleet renewal.
  • With tight industry capacity and strong demand persisting, OD anticipates sustaining its profitable growth momentum through Q4 2021 and into 2022.
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Earnings Conference Call
Old Dominion Freight Line Q3 2021
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Operator

Good morning, and welcome to the Old Dominion Freight Line Incorporated third quarter 2021 earnings conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Drew Anderson. Please go ahead.

Drew Anderson
Drew Anderson
Senior Director of Product Management at Old Dominion Freight Line

Thank you, Gary. Good morning and welcome to the third quarter 2021 conference call for Old Dominion Freight Line. Today's call is being recorded and will be available for replay beginning today and through November 3, 2021 by dialing 877-344-7529, access code 10160197. The replay of the webcast may also be accessed for 30 days at the company's website.

Drew Anderson
Drew Anderson
Senior Director of Product Management at Old Dominion Freight Line

This conference call may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements among others regarding Old Dominion's expected financial and operating performance. For this purpose, any statements made during this call that are not statements of historical fact may be deemed to be forward-looking statements.

Drew Anderson
Drew Anderson
Senior Director of Product Management at Old Dominion Freight Line

Without limiting the foregoing, the words believes, anticipates, plans, expects, and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. You are hereby cautioned that these statements may be affected by the important factors, among others, that are set forth in Old Dominion's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and in this morning's news release. Consequently, actual operations and results may differ materially from the results discussed in the forward-looking statements.

Drew Anderson
Drew Anderson
Senior Director of Product Management at Old Dominion Freight Line

The company undertakes no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. As a final note, before we begin, we welcome your questions today, but we ask in fairness to all that you limit yourselves to just to a couple of questions at a time before returning to the queue. Thank you in advance for your cooperation.

Drew Anderson
Drew Anderson
Senior Director of Product Management at Old Dominion Freight Line

At this time, for opening remarks, I would like to turn the conference over to the company's President and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Greg Gantt. Please go ahead, sir.

Greg C. Gantt
President and CEO at Old Dominion Freight Line

Good morning and welcome to our third quarter conference call. With me on the call today is Adam Satterfield, our CFO. After some brief remarks, we'll be glad to take your questions. During the third quarter, the Old Dominion team produced strong, profitable growth that included new company records for quarterly revenue and profitability.

Greg C. Gantt
President and CEO at Old Dominion Freight Line

The third quarter of 2021 was our third straight quarter with double-digit revenue growth and the fifth straight quarter of double-digit growth in earnings per diluted share. While our revenue results reflect the unprecedented demand for our best-in-class service, our ability to grow at these impressive rates is the result of our long-term commitment to consistently invest in capacity. We continue to have available network capacity as well as best-in-class service, both of which are qualities that differentiate us within our industry and provide a distinct competitive advantage for Old Dominion.

Greg C. Gantt
President and CEO at Old Dominion Freight Line

These qualities have also supported our ability to win market share and produce profitable growth over the long term. With continuing strength in the macroeconomic environment and limited industry capacity, we believe demand for transportation services will continue through the fourth quarter of this year and into 2022. As a result, we expect that our business level momentum that began in the third quarter of 2020 will also continue.

Greg C. Gantt
President and CEO at Old Dominion Freight Line

To take advantage of these opportunities and produce further profitable growth, we believe that it will be important for us to continue to execute on the long-term strategic plan that we have operated under for many years. This strategy focuses on delivering a value proposition of superior service at a fair price to our customers, which generally creates the capital for us to further invest in the capacity and technology to support our customers' supply chain needs.

Greg C. Gantt
President and CEO at Old Dominion Freight Line

Our most important investment, however, will continue to be in the OD family of employees. Our people are critical to our success as they work tirelessly each day to provide service value to our customers. We added over 1,000 new full-time employees between June and September of this year. These additions resulted in a 20.9% increase in our average full-time headcount as compared to the third quarter of 2020. While we have grown the OD family this year, the capacity of our people continues to be our biggest need to support future growth.

Greg C. Gantt
President and CEO at Old Dominion Freight Line

As a result, we expect that we will continue to add new full-time employees to our team during the fourth quarter and next year.

Greg C. Gantt
President and CEO at Old Dominion Freight Line

We believe further additions will be necessary to prepare for anticipated growth and to also reduce the use of third-party purchase transportation. We expect to use third-party purchase transportation during the fourth quarter at levels similar to the third quarter. While we would like to reduce this level of utilization, we must continue to supplement the capacity of our people and our fleet in support of our top line revenue performance.

Greg C. Gantt
President and CEO at Old Dominion Freight Line

We hold the third parties that we work with to the same standards of excellence, and our team remains fully committed to providing best-in-class service to our customers. Our customers' expectation for excellence do not change regardless of how we move their freight. Given the supply chain challenges that many of them are currently facing, we want them to have complete confidence in our ability to deliver.

Greg C. Gantt
President and CEO at Old Dominion Freight Line

Old Dominion sets the standard in our industry with our ability to provide superior service and service center capacity to support our customers' growth. As a result, we believe we are in a better position than any other carrier to win additional market share and further increase shareholder value over the long term. Thank you for joining us this morning. Now Adam will discuss our third quarter financial results in greater detail.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

Thank you, Greg, and good morning. Old Dominion's revenue grew 32.3% in the third quarter to $1.4 billion, and our operating ratio improved to 72.6%. The combination of these changes led to a 44.4% increase in earnings per diluted share to $2.47 for the quarter. Our revenue growth was balanced between LTL volumes and yield, both of which were supported by the strong domestic economy and capacity issues within the industry.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

Our LTL tons increased 13.7%, and LTL revenue per hundredweight increased 15.7%, which also reflects the impact on our fuel surcharge program from the increase in diesel fuel prices.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

Excluding fuel surcharges, LTL revenue per hundredweight increased 10.1% as a result of the continued success with our yield improvement initiatives, as well as changes in the mix of our freight. On a sequential basis, third quarter LTL shipments per day increased 3.2% over the second quarter of 2021, as compared to a ten-year average sequential increase of 2.9%. LTL tons per day increased 1.0% as compared to a ten-year average sequential increase of 1.9%.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

These ten-year average trends exclude our 2020 metrics for a more normalized comparison. At this point in October, with only a few workdays remaining in the month, our revenue per day has increased by approximately 33%-35% when compared to October of 2020.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

We will provide the actual revenue-related details for October in our third quarter Form 10-Q. The operating ratio for the third quarter improved 190 basis points to 72.6% as a result of the operating leverage created by our revenue growth, as well as our continued focus on operating efficiencies. Many of our cost categories improved as a percent of revenue during the quarter, although our operating supplies and expenses increased 200 basis points, due primarily to the rising cost of diesel fuel and other petroleum-based products.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

As a percent of revenue, salaries, wages, and benefits improved 320 basis points between the periods compared. Our productive labor costs within this expense category improved 200 basis points, which more than offset the 130 basis point increase in purchase transportation.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

Old Dominion's cash flow from operations totaled $364.3 million and $872.6 million for the third quarter and first nine months of 2021, respectively, while capital expenditures were $178.6 million and $384.7 million for the same periods. We noted in our release this morning that our capital expenditures are now estimated to be $565 million for this year. The $40 million decrease from our prior estimate is mainly due to the timing on large real estate projects that will be pushed into next year. We will provide further details about our 2022 capital expenditure plan with our fourth quarter earnings release.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

At this time, we expect to increase our expenditures to support our ongoing market share initiatives and to reduce the average age of our fleet. We continued to return capital to shareholders during the third quarter through our dividend and share repurchase programs, including the $250 million accelerated share repurchase agreement that will expire no later than March 2022.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

For the first nine months of this year, the cash utilized for share return programs included $599 million for share repurchases and $69.4 million of cash dividends. Our effective tax rate for the third quarter of 2021 was 25.2% as compared to 24.8% in the third quarter of 2020. We currently anticipate our effective tax rate to be 25.8% for the fourth quarter.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

This concludes our prepared remarks this morning. Operator, we'll be happy to open the floor for questions at this time.

Operator

We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Our first question today comes from Christian Wetherbee with Citigroup. Please go ahead.

Christian Wetherbee
Christian Wetherbee
Senior Research Analyst at Citigroup

Yeah. Hey, thanks. Good morning, guys. Maybe you can start. Trends, Adam, you mentioned the tonnage trends in the quarter. I think they were a little bit below sequentially what is normal. Clearly, we saw a little bit of a deceleration in August before it seems like September picked back up. Can you talk a little bit about sort of business conditions in the quarter and maybe what we saw inter-quarter and kind of how that's played out as we move here into early October?

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

Sure. One of the things driving the change in shipments versus tonnage, as well to point out first, is the fact that we continue to have a little bit lower weight per shipment rather. That's a change that we've talked about in recent quarters as we've continued to focus on more traditional LTL shipments and try to work out some of these larger, harder to handle type of shipments that are more transactional in nature, generally, within our system. That had a little bit of an impact overall in that discrepancy, if you will, between the tons and the shipments.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

When we look at shipments, they were on a sequential basis just above what the ten-year trend would have been at 3.2% versus the 2.9. There's a little discrepancy there. Back to the point of your question, when we looked at really the volumes in general, both tonnage and shipments, as we worked through the quarter, we were right in line with normal sequential trends in July versus June, but then had a pretty big step back in August. Our tons per day in August decreased 1.6% from July. The ten-year average change is a 0.5% increase there.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

A big reason for that was the fact that we started seeing across the country the rise in COVID cases and just the ongoing labor issues that are affecting many customers and warehouses throughout the country. That certainly had an effect on our business directly and indirectly, really. That was an issue that caused us in some cases to not be able to pick up freight when we couldn't be able to deliver it.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

There was certainly a ripple effect I think throughout the economy and reflected in our business results as well. As cases started to improve and you know some of that pickup back in the labor participation rates we saw significant recovery.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

Really, it began towards the end of August, but really accelerated through the month of September, such that our tons per day in September were up 5.2% over August versus the 10-year average change of 3.7%. So, certainly made up for that and then some, as we accelerated through the end of the quarter.

Christian Wetherbee
Christian Wetherbee
Senior Research Analyst at Citigroup

Okay. That's very helpful. It seems like revenue per day in October would suggest that maybe that trend has continued, so kind of curious about that. As a follow-up, you know, kind of wanted to get a sense of, you know, with the context of tonnage and obviously with very strong pricing environment, but obviously you're hiring at a rapid clip, and I would imagine there's some inflation on that side. How do we think about the normal sequential cadence of operating ratio as we look into the fourth quarter?

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

Sure. Well, you know, as Greg mentioned in our prepared remarks, we will continue to focus on bringing on new employees as we go through the fourth quarter, and it's something that, frankly, we've been doing all year. If you look at kind of the change in our volumes and change in people, we've exceeded what our normal sequential trends have been, I think, for 5 straight quarters. That's something that we think will continue given the strength of the demand environment that we certainly feel very confident that that will extend into 2022.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

It's important for us to continue to really build up all the elements of capacity that we need in our business, and that's people, fleet, and the service center side to be able to accommodate our customers' expectations for growth and to be able to continue to deliver best-in-class service to them. With that said, I still feel good about you know the performance in the third quarter. We were pretty much right in line.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

The sequential operating ratio performance was right in line with normal trends. You know, that factored in a lot of costs that were coming on board. We'll still face some of those cost challenges, but we would expect it to be right in line with what our normal sequential change is from 3Q to 4Q.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

That's typically in a 200-250 basis point increase from the third quarter. I think that we should be able to be in that range while we'll have some costs continuing to come at us, both in relation to the investment in new employees. We are still taking delivery on some equipment, so we've got some cost pressures there. We've still got incredible top-line revenue performance that's helping to offset those, and certainly yield performance has continued to be strong.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

As you alluded to with the change in our volumes and overall revenue for October, we are performing well above what the normal sequential trend would otherwise be on the volume side, and pricing strength is certainly continuing as well.

Christian Wetherbee
Christian Wetherbee
Senior Research Analyst at Citigroup

Great. That's very helpful. Thanks for the time. Appreciate it.

Operator

The next question is from Jordan Alliger with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Jordan Alliger
Jordan Alliger
VP and Equity Research Analyst at Goldman Sachs

Yeah. Hi. Just to follow up, I guess, on some of the headcount related things. When you think about volume growth, whatever the expectations are and the headcount needs, should it roughly track, you know, once we get past this year, you know, headcount and volumes or do you need less headcount relative to volume growth? Thanks.

Greg C. Gantt
President and CEO at Old Dominion Freight Line

Yeah, Jordan, I think it'll continue to track to some extent, but you got to remember, we've been really chasing it for the most part, all year. As our growth has accelerated, we've continued to chase our needs and continued to play catch up to some degree. I do think that we'll start to moderate and level back out to more normal type pace going forward. At least that's what we hope.

Jordan Alliger
Jordan Alliger
VP and Equity Research Analyst at Goldman Sachs

Okay. I assume as others, you're seeing, in order to get the people, and you've had good success, obviously, a need to push up the wage per employee or cost per employee, however you want to look at it.

Greg C. Gantt
President and CEO at Old Dominion Freight Line

Yeah, I mean, we have done the same thing this year that we've done in years past. We gave our annual raise in September. Yeah, in some cases, we've had to increase starting wages. You know, we've had some places where we've had referral bonuses and those kind of things. You know, like I've mentioned in quarters past, you know, we're having success. We just have to work a little harder at it and you know, do things a little bit differently, whatever it takes to get the folks on board. You know, we're having success and I expect we'll continue to do so.

Jordan Alliger
Jordan Alliger
VP and Equity Research Analyst at Goldman Sachs

Thank you.

Operator

The next question is from Ravi Shanker with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Ravi Shanker
Ravi Shanker
Managing Director at Morgan Stanley

Thanks. Morning all. Maybe the first question is kind of along that similar trend, kind of you guys are well known to keep your 25% excess capacity. How does that trend over the next several quarters, do you think? Is now the right time to build that buffer given the higher cost of building capacity in the current environment? What are your competitors doing? Are they batten down the hatches and trying to get price or is everybody in the industry also trying to grow capacity?

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

Yeah, Ravi, we're still at about 15%-20% excess capacity, and that's in the service center network, which is the most important in the LTL business. I mean, it certainly takes people and trucks, but that's the longest term form of capacity and the hardest to put in place. We've been certainly consistent with our investments over the years, and we'll continue on that front as we finish out this year and then transition into next year. But that's about at the same point that we were when we finished last quarter as well.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

Despite the strong sequential volume performance that we had in 3Q, we've been able to keep that excess capacity level at about the same spot.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

you know, we're going to keep after it and keep adding to those capacity levels. Certainly, as Greg mentioned, we've got to really continue to be focused in the short term on continuing to add people into the mix. That's probably been our biggest need all year as we work through the balance of the year. It really takes all three forms, you know. You know, we came into this year, we don't really know exactly what our competitors' strategies are, but we came into this year believing that we had more capacity than anyone, and that really goes back to our 10-year investment that we've made.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

We've expanded our door count by over 50%, over the last 10 years, and we've seen very little investment from some of the others. You know, maybe a service center here and there, but nothing at any major scale. That's created an environment for us to be able to win more market share than anyone else. Certainly, we believe we've still got best in class service. We've got a service advantage in the marketplace, and we've got more capacity than anyone else.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

That gives us a capacity advantage in the marketplace. That usually produces pretty phenomenal results when we get into these strong demand periods like we've been in this year, and what we expect to see for next year as well.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

It gives us a lot of confidence to say we're the best positioned carrier to continue to produce profitable growth and increase shareholder value, even from the levels from which we're currently operating.

Ravi Shanker
Ravi Shanker
Managing Director at Morgan Stanley

Got it. That's great detail. Maybe just one follow-up on the capacity thing. Just on new trucks, do you feel like you're gonna get all the trucks that you need in 2022, or does that look like something that happens in 2023 or maybe even 2024?

Greg C. Gantt
President and CEO at Old Dominion Freight Line

No, we think we're going to get what we've asked for. At this point in time, there's no indication that we will not. You know, we'll have to wait and see obviously, but so far the outlook from a truck standpoint is good.

Ravi Shanker
Ravi Shanker
Managing Director at Morgan Stanley

Very good. Thank you.

Operator

The next question is from Jonathan Chappell with Evercore ISI. Please go ahead.

Jonathan Chappell
Jonathan Chappell
Senior Managing Director at Evercore ISI

Thank you. Good morning. Greg, in the last call, you mentioned hopes for maybe 9 new terminals by the end of this year, although acknowledging that some will definitely slip into 2022. Can you give us an update on the pace for the remainder of this year, what you have line of sight on for early 2022? If we can even take a step further and think about holistically the next 12 months, what's your kind of ideal additional capacity as it relates to either terminal count or door count?

Greg C. Gantt
President and CEO at Old Dominion Freight Line

Yeah. The terminal count, John, I think we've got another 3 or 4 that we expect to open in this calendar year, and we have numerous others that we're working on for next year. I can't give you an exact number, but I'm gonna say we're in about the 8-10 range for next year, something like that. You know, we've got a lot of projects that we're in the middle of, and then we've got an awful lot on the list to start as we go forward.

Greg C. Gantt
President and CEO at Old Dominion Freight Line

You know, just remember a lot of those things, they take time, and well, it's like pulling teeth, if you will, in some cases. You know, we're working on the locations where we need help and where we think we know we could be capacity constrained.

Greg C. Gantt
President and CEO at Old Dominion Freight Line

We're on it and hope to continue to be able to accomplish wherever our needs are.

Jonathan Chappell
Jonathan Chappell
Senior Managing Director at Evercore ISI

Okay. My follow-up will be along the same lines. I think when some people hear capacity expansion or terminal expansion, their immediate thought goes to start-up costs and potentially weighing on the aggregate margin. Given the size of your network today, is there just better scale of onboarding a new terminal so that the, you know, immediate tonnage impact from that has a pretty de minimis impact on the aggregate operating ratio of the entire firm?

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

I mean, we're covering all markets today. When we open a new facility, it already starts with a good book of business, if you will, and it's pretty much profitable immediately. That also frees up some capacity in the existing service center that we move ZIP codes and freight out of into the new location. That's been part of our expansion process over the years. You know, certainly we've invested a lot of dollars in expanding our network and that 50% increase in door count that I talked about earlier.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

You know, that kinda all goes into it, and it's why when we talk about our yield management philosophy that, you know, we focus on getting an increase every year in our revenue per shipment to exceed what our cost per shipment inflation will be, but also to support the continued investment in our service center network. As supply chains become more sophisticated, customers are leveraging our network to their benefit as we're processing freight through our network of about 250 service centers today.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

It's something that we're effectively purchasing real estate capacity on behalf of our customers, and we're one of the only that's really making the type of material investments that we have.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

It's important for us to continue to keep that within the context of yield management so that we can afford these service centers. They're becoming more and more expensive as we're competing with different parties to go out and find the real estate to continue to support our growth. Certainly, we've had great success in the past. We've got a good team that's out that's always trying to stay ahead of the growth curve. At the levels where we are, we feel like we've got to probably stay a little bit further ahead of the curve than we have in years past. We've got a good plan.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

We've got a list of about 35-40 service centers that we think we wanna add to the network in due time, and probably won't stop there. We feel like we've got a very long runway for growth ahead of us, given our expectations for growth in the industry, given the consolidation in the industry and general lack of investment by other carriers. It's certainly a great spot for us to be in to continue to be in a good position to win market share.

Jonathan Chappell
Jonathan Chappell
Senior Managing Director at Evercore ISI

Yep, absolutely. Thanks so much, Adam. Very helpful. Thanks, Greg.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

Yes, sir.

Operator

The next question is from Tom Wadewitz with UBS. Please go ahead.

Tom Wadewitz
Tom Wadewitz
Senior Equity Research Analyst at UBS

Yeah, good morning. I wanted to ask you first maybe just on kind of broader supply chain constraints and how you think they affect you, or perhaps they just don't. Obviously, there's a, you know, a lot of discussion around the ports and, you know, it's pretty clear there, you know, truckload is constrained, bridge is constrained, intermodal as well.

Tom Wadewitz
Tom Wadewitz
Senior Equity Research Analyst at UBS

Is there any effect to your, you know, kinda your business? I mean, I guess you get some spillover freight, but just how do you think that, you know, some of the broader labor constraints and supply chain noise affect you? Is there some tonnage constraint or limitations or some cost pressure, or are you pretty much immune to it?

Greg C. Gantt
President and CEO at Old Dominion Freight Line

I don't know if we're immune to anything that's going on in the marketplace. You know, Tom, we do see continued strength off the West Coast. I mean, obviously there's a lot of stuff sitting out there on the water. As it continues to get into the warehouses and whatnot, you know, we're seeing and feeling that strength in those markets.

Greg C. Gantt
President and CEO at Old Dominion Freight Line

Certainly, we're not immune to anything and, you know, any change of strategy or whatever by our suppliers or our customers will change some of the things that we have to do and possibly where the freight comes to, goes from, whatever. Right now, you know, we adjust as is necessary.

Greg C. Gantt
President and CEO at Old Dominion Freight Line

You know, so far I'd say the impact has been somewhat minimal, if you will. Again, not immune to anything that's going on, but not a huge impact.

Tom Wadewitz
Tom Wadewitz
Senior Equity Research Analyst at UBS

Yeah. Okay. I appreciate it. I know that's a pretty high level question. What about tonnage growth? I guess you talked about revenue per day in October. I don't know if you wanna comment a little bit more about tonnage. But how do you think about, you know, the ballpark that tonnage growth might be in fourth quarter, and what it potentially could be in 2022 is kind of, you know, you go back to like mid-single digits or high single digits next year. How do you broadly think about the framework for tonnage growth in 4Q? You know, I know it would be high level, but next year.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

Yeah, we don't, you know, wanna give any specific guidance per se, but, you know, the balance of the revenue growth in October is pretty consistent, pretty split evenly between yield and tonnage like it was in the third quarter. Those two numbers were pretty close. You know, on the yield side, obviously recently, fuel prices have continued to increase, so that overall revenue per hundredweight metric will continue to reflect that number.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

But again, we're still seeing considerable strength on the volume side as well. You know, certainly as we go through the period and you think about the comparisons, you know, certainly get a little bit tougher each month as we work through the fourth quarter.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

You know, last year our volumes were accelerating month after month and you know such that the third quarter was the fifth of really strong outperformance versus what our normal trends have been. You know, typically we see strong performance and you know for five or six quarters like that and then kinda revert to normal sequential trends, which by the way reflect a whole lot of market share gains over the past 10 years when you think about our shipments per day are averaging about a 50% increase versus where we were 10 years ago. There's a lot of market share gains that are in them, those numbers.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

Overall, I think if you just were to say that we operated on normal sequential trends, you know, that puts us with some pretty strong numbers on the volume side next year. We don't wanna say that's what the forecast is, 'cause right now, we haven't seen any letdown with respect to demand. It's hard to call that we're gonna see any slowdown. Certainly based on customer conversations and everything that we see and read, we feel like this unprecedented level of demand that we've seen this year will continue into next year, especially if the other carriers are continuing to be capacity constrained.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

It certainly could continue to just push more and more volumes our way.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

We just gotta be in a position to continue to bring it on board and make sure we're focused on profitable growth, which is what our long-term focus has been. Continue to take care of our customers and offering them solutions, you know, in various ways, be it handling all their LTL shipments, using our truckload brokerage division, to help them out with any truckload moves as best we can. The drayage division that we have in our non-LTL as well, which is mainly focused in the Southeast, is seeing a lot of strength there.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

It all comes back to building the relationship with your customer and trying to continue to serve them as best you can.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

We're gonna continue with that focus as we transition into 2022, but not keeping our eye off the ball with respect to the fourth quarter as well. We still got a lot of work to do to finish out this year with strength.

Tom Wadewitz
Tom Wadewitz
Senior Equity Research Analyst at UBS

It sounds like your resource additions, your headcount. That seems like you're planning for pretty good growth next year as well, just what you're doing on headcount. Is that fair?

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

Fair. Yes, sir. Yeah, 'cause we've still gotta try to reduce this purchase transportation. We'd like to get back to managing the business completely insourced on our line haul standpoint. That's what we've done in the past. You know, we're using it to supplement the team right now, again, just getting back to being able to serve our customers. Certainly, that's a focus, and it will take our headcount exceeding our shipment count.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

Over the long term, those two numbers are really aligned, the change in headcount and the change in shipments. We've got to catch back up with things, and we've been under the shipment growth, if you will, for the past year and a half.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

It's gonna take a period to sort of regain that, to not only catch up with where our business levels are, but really to be anticipating the growth that we're likely to see next year.

Tom Wadewitz
Tom Wadewitz
Senior Equity Research Analyst at UBS

Okay. Thanks for the time. I appreciate it.

Operator

The next question is from Scott Group with Wolfe Research. Please go ahead.

Scott Group
Scott Group
Managing Director at Wolfe Research

Hey, thanks. Good morning, guys.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

Good morning, Scott.

Scott Group
Scott Group
Managing Director at Wolfe Research

You guys will clearly be sub 75 on operating ratio for the calendar year. I can't imagine you wanna put a timeline on it, but do you feel like you've got line of sight to getting to that 70 or sub 70 OR over the next several years?

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

Well, you know, I think that's something that we just gotta continue to work at. You know, when you look over the past two years, the improvement that we've had in the operating ratio, that two-year performance really has only been exceeded by the two-year performance back in 2010 and 2011 coming out of the depths of the recession. We're really proud of what we've achieved over the last few years, and we feel confident to say that we know we've got room for further improvement.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

You know, I think we'll wait until we get to the fourth quarter to really start talking about, you know, kind of what our next target will be.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

Again, if you look over the long term, we've averaged 100-150 basis points improvement in the operating ratio each year, and that sort of gets back to that delta between our revenue and cost per shipment. You know, a lot goes into each of those two numbers.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

us managing our costs and continuing to focus on productivity and offsetting all the costs that go along with expanding our model and that creates some short-term cost headwinds. When you look at the long-term performance for what we've done over the past 10 years, producing an average of 10%-11% change in revenue each year and about a 25% average annual increase in our EPS, you know, that's driven considerable share value over that 10-year period, and we wanna continue to do that as we look out into the next 10-year horizon as well.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

Certainly a lot of opportunity, but it's a lot of hard work and focus on execution on our part to make it happen.

Scott Group
Scott Group
Managing Director at Wolfe Research

Okay. I wanna ask on the labor side. I know we've touched on headcount, but do you feel the need, I guess two things, for wages or comp per employee to increase more than the normal given inflation? Just any thoughts on vaccine mandate and what your expectations are there, how you're planning for it. Do you think it's gonna happen, carve outs, things like that.

Greg C. Gantt
President and CEO at Old Dominion Freight Line

Yeah. You know, Scott, as I mentioned before, you know, we've had to do some things a little bit different from a pay and benefit standpoint, pay mainly. We look at benefits every year and see where we can make improvements, and we've done that over the course of time. I don't think we've got to do anything drastically different from a pay standpoint. You know, we did give an annual increase again this past September, as we've done in years past.

Greg C. Gantt
President and CEO at Old Dominion Freight Line

Again, we've had to do referral bonuses and hiring bonuses in most certain locations where we, you know, are really challenged to find folks. I don't think it'll be significantly different going forward, what we have to do.

Greg C. Gantt
President and CEO at Old Dominion Freight Line

Like I said before, and I've said over the years, you know, we can still get people. We just have to work harder at doing it. I think we'll continue with that focus. We're always looking for ways and different avenues to accomplish, you know, whatever the hiring needs that we have are. We'll continue to do that. What was that last question you asked about the vaccine?

Scott Group
Scott Group
Managing Director at Wolfe Research

Yeah, I was just asking your thoughts on vaccine mandate and what you're doing to plan for it.

Greg C. Gantt
President and CEO at Old Dominion Freight Line

Wow. Yeah, we would, we'd love to have some clear line of sight as to just exactly what's coming down the line. I know you've heard the same thing we've heard, and there's a mandate supposedly coming, but I'm not exactly sure where that is right now. I think you also know that we actually back about four months ago, we offered our employees an incentive to get vaccinated. You know, we've had some success with that. As far as a mandate goes, that would be extremely difficult in my opinion.

Greg C. Gantt
President and CEO at Old Dominion Freight Line

It's either get vaccinated or do the testing. You know, we're still working on that and trying to figure out, you know, how we can accomplish testing the numbers of folks that we would have to test on a weekly basis.

Greg C. Gantt
President and CEO at Old Dominion Freight Line

Extremely difficult to accomplish. I don't wanna say impossible, but there's some challenges there that I think are gonna be very difficult if it comes to that. God help our industry if it does. You know, if you think we got supply chain issues now across the country, that could really throw it into a you know, some kind of a crazy tailspin. You know, we'll see where it goes, but hopefully clear heads will prevail at some point.

Scott Group
Scott Group
Managing Director at Wolfe Research

Are you hearing that? Do you have confidence that I mean, everyone says the same thing, it would be a disaster. Are you confident that the government gets that?

Greg C. Gantt
President and CEO at Old Dominion Freight Line

Confident that the government gets that? No, not at all. I sure hope. You know, at some point in time, I think common sense has to prevail. I know the, you know, there's some forces in Washington. I think the ATA is working on a couple different things, and, you know, hopefully we'll have some success with that, you know, exempting truckers, you know, whatever the strategy might be. But, you know, at some point in time, I think common sense has to prevail.

Greg C. Gantt
President and CEO at Old Dominion Freight Line

There's a place for that. I'm not sure we've used a whole lot of it to this point, but certainly there is a place for that in as it relates to vaccines and mandates and whatnot. Yeah.

Greg C. Gantt
President and CEO at Old Dominion Freight Line

I think the other thing is, fortunately, the numbers we're seeing are moving in the right direction as far as COVID goes. They're really dropping. I think I saw something on the news this morning where we're down to a four something% positivity rate. Maybe that was just for the state of North Carolina. I'm not sure. The numbers do look a lot better than they did, you know, back several months ago. Again, I think if you take that into account, you know, with where we are as far as the numbers of cases and those kind of things, surely at some point, you know, common sense will prevail. Surely.

Scott Group
Scott Group
Managing Director at Wolfe Research

Thank you, guys. Appreciate it.

Operator

The next question is from Amit Mehrotra with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Amit Mehrotra
Amit Mehrotra
Managing Director at Deutsche Bank

Thanks very much. I wanted to follow up on the long-term margin question. Adam, for a while, you've kind of tagged incrementals at 25%. Obviously, it's been much better than that, just given how much shipment growth has outpaced expense growth. But obviously that's reversing a little bit, and incrementals seem to kind of be coming down, settling maybe in the low 30% level. You know, those types of incrementals obviously imply kind of about 70 OR.

Amit Mehrotra
Amit Mehrotra
Managing Director at Deutsche Bank

That's really sort of the plateau for the company versus kind of the very low 70s you're doing now. Is there anything, Adam, in that kind of framework that you would disagree with? Do you think, you know, structural incrementals have moved up relative to where you saw them a few years ago?

Amit Mehrotra
Amit Mehrotra
Managing Director at Deutsche Bank

Just talk about kind of, you know, how you see that framework evolving.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

Sure. You know, one, we've said this before, but we don't manage the company to the incremental margin. That's just a calculation of all the work that we do in sort of building out, you know, balancing the revenue growth and margin improvement opportunities. We had used that long-term target of 25 really as an inverse to say we were working towards a 75 operating ratio goal. That's really more of what we talk about within the company for where we think we can take the operating ratio. You know, I think we'll give a little bit more color on that when we get to our fourth quarter call.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

You know, obviously, based on kind of what I mentioned earlier about the target for the fourth quarter, you know, that puts us at an annual operating ratio somewhere around 74%. We certainly looks like we will be able to beat that 75 OR target this year. You know, as it comes down to incremental margins, I think this will go down as our biggest incremental margin year in our history.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

When we've talked about the cost structure with you before, you know, we've laid out how the cost structure is balanced between our variable and fixed costs and how we can operate at a 35%-40% incremental margin in a particular quarter in a short period of time.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

You know, we don't want to get overly fixated on incremental margins, because again, we're focusing on the investments that are required to drive long-term growth. We don't measure the success of our business based on how strong an incremental can be. It's really some of those longer term numbers that I referenced earlier. We wanna be able to repeat that because we think there's a lot of growth opportunity left within our business.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

That's gonna be the focus. It requires investment, and that can create some short-term headwinds, and if that's the only lens that you look at things through, you miss out on a ton of opportunity to drive shareholder value. We're gonna keep that long-term focus, continue to make the necessary investments.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

You know, if that drives the incremental down a little bit, you know, I'm pretty pleased with 33. I don't think that's anything to sneeze at for the quarter in producing a very strong 72.6 operating ratio. You know, based on that cost structure breakdown, we feel confident in saying that we certainly can drive the operating ratio meaningfully lower.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

You know, we'll continue to, whenever we get to whatever that next threshold might be, you know, we'll continue to look at managing the business and how the algorithm works. That's not to say that whatever the next stopping point will be the final stopping point. We think that there's a lot of opportunity left here. We'll just keep marching forward.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

The algorithm certainly has worked for us in the past and we think can continue to work for us into the future.

Amit Mehrotra
Amit Mehrotra
Managing Director at Deutsche Bank

Sure. Yeah, that makes sense. Thank you. Just as a quick follow-up, you know, you were helpful in providing tonnage for October, or at least kind of, you know, at a high level. Obviously, when you deconstruct tonnage, weight's been a decent drag to tonnage. When do you think that cycles through? Because obviously it has implications for, you know, headcount relative to shipment growth. You know, when do you think, like, the cycling through of the weight per shipment drag happens and it's a little bit more of a neutral to the tonnage number?

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

Yeah. You know, if you go back to the first quarter of this year, we were still at sort of a 1,600-pound range average. That dropped to 1,570 in the second quarter. I feel like we're probably likely to settle in this 1,550-pound range, you know, kind of plus or minus 20 pounds or so. We'll still have a little bit of a drag, if you wanna call it that, with the first quarter comparison. By 2Q of next year, you should start to see that more normalize and see the shipment and tonnage performance, you know, more comparable with one another.

Amit Mehrotra
Amit Mehrotra
Managing Director at Deutsche Bank

Okay. Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

Operator

The next question is from Jack Atkins with Stephens. Please go ahead.

Jack Atkins
Jack Atkins
Research Analyst at Stephens

Okay, Greg, good morning, and thank you for taking my questions.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

Hey, Jack.

Jack Atkins
Jack Atkins
Research Analyst at Stephens

You know, I guess just to kind of think about pricing and yield momentum here for a moment, just based on, you know, the commentary that you guys have around the momentum in the business from a demand perspective and the expectation for that to continue into 2022, can you maybe speak to the pricing momentum that you're seeing maybe in the second half of the year versus the first half of the year?

Jack Atkins
Jack Atkins
Research Analyst at Stephens

You know, as you sort of look out into 2022 with truckload carriers talking about, you know, potentially double-digit contractual rate increases, how should we be thinking about maybe, you know, the core price increases in the LTL market more broadly? Not speaking to OD specifically, but just kind of thinking about, you know, the potential for further yield acceleration in 2022.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

Well, I think for the industry, if we continue to see this supply and demand imbalance, you know, in the past, many of the carriers that are out of capacity certainly use the environment to push prices meaningfully higher and try to take advantage and improve their margins. Certainly, you know, that type of environment is supportive of our pricing initiatives. You know, for us, it's more of a long-term consistent approach and one that we think is fair but equitable.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

You know, it's one that we can sit down with our customers and talk about what our cost inflation is and what our needs are in terms of reinvesting in the business to either improve customer service or investing in ways that ultimately are gonna reduce costs so that it's a win-win situation for both us and our customers. We try to target our cost inflation and then some, and we've been pretty successful with that. That will continue to be the focus.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

You know, with that said, we're always focusing on the individual account profitability. When you're in these types of environments, you know, there's some accounts that their operating ratios are not as good as others.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

Those are the types of accounts that, you know, really over the last couple of years, that we've had to address some issues, and there's different ways to improve yield. It's not always through price. You know, that's where you sit down and you build on your relationship together and work through different initiatives that ultimately can create the same result of yield improvement there.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

You know, certainly, given the expectation that the demand trends will remain very strong and, given the lack of capacity that we believe is in the industry, and that's mainly grounded in the feedback that we're getting from customers, we certainly expect there to be a strong pricing environment for the industry next year, from which we will be able to benefit.

Jack Atkins
Jack Atkins
Research Analyst at Stephens

Okay. That's great. I guess just maybe following up. You know, Greg, kinda going back to a comment that you had in the press release around length of haul extending out on a year-over-year basis. Could you maybe talk a little bit about what's driving that? Is that a function of, you know, comps? Is that a function of maybe some changes to, you know, your own business mix? Just would be curious if you could maybe expand a little bit about on that comment and if that's, you know, maybe more of a structural change for you.

Greg C. Gantt
President and CEO at Old Dominion Freight Line

Jack, as I mentioned before, I think we're seeing an awful lot of strength right now off of the West Coast. Obviously all those containers sitting out there, that freight's gotta move inland at some point. I think that's why we're seeing the increase, you know, the small increase in our length of haul. I don't know that there's anything else that would contribute to that.

Jack Atkins
Jack Atkins
Research Analyst at Stephens

Okay. All right. That makes sense. Thanks again for the time.

Operator

The next question is from Todd Fowler with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Todd Fowler
Todd Fowler
Managing Director at KeyBanc Capital Markets

Great. Thanks, and good morning. Adam, to the comments on the OR progression in the fourth quarter, I guess it's pretty encouraging that the expectation is to be in the historical range because it seems like that maybe headcount growth would be a little bit higher than what you typically have seen, and purchased transportation is gonna be elevated. What are the things that are helping you stay within the normal range despite, you know, maybe adding a few more heads than you typically would in 4Q and running a little bit more PT?

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

Well, I think that, you know, one, the top line performance, you know, certainly helps offset a lot of cost. You know, we'll see how the rest of the quarter shapes up, if you will. You know, typically we see a little bit of softness, if you will, just about a 0.5%-1% drop in our revenue per day performance from 3Q to 4Q. You know, based on the current performance, we're definitely outperforming October, if you will. We'll see where that puts us for the end of the quarter. You know, we're doing a lot of things with respect to managing costs.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

We talk a lot about, you know, the labor cost, and that's probably 65% of total costs in our salary, wages, and benefits line. We've seen a lot of productivity this year, especially within our line haul and our pickup and delivery operations. We've lost some productivity on the dock. I think that this, the fourth quarter and the first quarter, that'll be some opportunity that we continue to focus on. It's not that we haven't been focused on it, but I think that that's something that will help on the labor front if we can reduce the levels of purchased transportation and manage more freight with our people and our equipment.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

Certainly think that that will be beneficial as well, given the rates that we're having to pay. You know, we're using about the same level in October as we were in the third quarter. You know, we hope that we'll be able to reduce that level of utilization a little bit. At this point, you know, the top-line trends have dictated all year. I think every quarterly call we've had for the last four quarters, we've talked about wanting to be able to reduce that expense category, but the top-line trends have really dictated that continued utilization. We'll see where that balances out.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

There's just a you know a lot of cost management that is here within the business and that we're focused on as well as continuing to see that strong top-line performance that will help offset you know some of this inflation as we're bringing on new people. You know we'll continue to see our benefit costs in the third quarter were higher and expect that will likely continue as we're continuing to balance out the number of hours worked by our employees.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

As we increase that workforce there's certainly gonna be more incremental benefit costs that will be incurred. We feel good about all the other contributing factors to help offset some of that cost inflation.

Todd Fowler
Todd Fowler
Managing Director at KeyBanc Capital Markets

Okay. Yeah, that helps and all that makes sense. Yeah, just for my follow-up, I know that the timing of equipment deliveries can have an impact on particularly the depreciation side. You know, this year it looks like depreciation is gonna run pretty much flat with last year. You know, do you look at 2022 as kind of being a catch-up where you see more depreciation come in based on timing of equipment deliveries? And I'd expect there'd be a little bit of put and take with PT probably coming down.

Todd Fowler
Todd Fowler
Managing Director at KeyBanc Capital Markets

But just, you know, any thoughts about how depreciation trends into 2022 just given the cost, you know, kind of tail that can have?

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

Yeah, it certainly, you know, we've seen the equipment deliveries delayed a little bit this year. You know, we haven't finished completely with the delivery cycle at this point, but we do expect that all units ordered will be delivered to us, and we've already had preliminary conversations with our OEMs about next year, as well. As Greg mentioned, we believe we will get all of the equipment that we need to be able to manage the growth that we're anticipating. But that has resulted in, you know, some depreciation that's kind of coming in different periods.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

That too will be something that, if we're only about 80% through September complete with the CapEx order on the equipment, there will be some deliveries that we're taking here in the fourth quarter that will add to that depreciation base, and then that will trend up as we go into 2022. Typically, you know, you look at kind of the long-term trends, there's a pretty consistent factor of what our CapEx is and a percent of that that kind of adds to the depreciation base.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

You know, I don't want to get into too many details until we're really ready to roll out what the full CapEx plan will be. There will be some carryover into the next year from this year's CapEx plan.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

Certainly, next year we're expecting that we'll be spending quite a bit more than this year on total CapEx.

Todd Fowler
Todd Fowler
Managing Director at KeyBanc Capital Markets

Okay. Got it. Thanks for the time this morning.

Operator

The next question is from Ken Hoexter with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Ken Hoexter
Ken Hoexter
Managing Director at BofA

Great. Good morning. Greg and Adam, happy to join your call. Just some cleanup questions for me. You covered a lot. The wage incentives, Greg, are they accelerating now or are they stabilizing? I just want to get an idea on the environment, maybe just a thoughts on how it's changed through the year.

Greg C. Gantt
President and CEO at Old Dominion Freight Line

Yeah, we did some things, Ken, if you go back earlier in the year when we were having issues, we implemented some couple different bonus plans and incentives, whatever it took to bring the folks on that we needed. That's moderated to some degree. We haven't really increased those type bonuses or incentives, whatever of late that I'm aware of. I think that's moderated to some degree.

Ken Hoexter
Ken Hoexter
Managing Director at BofA

Yeah. That's a good sign if you're able to still get people and your incentives are moderating, I guess. The sequential OR commentary, are there adjustments you worked on to smooth that? You know, Adam, you noted it was a typical 200-250 basis point third quarter, fourth quarter. Are there seasonal surcharges you look to add to maybe smooth that out a bit?

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

No, there's you know, no surcharges or anything like that. You know, the fourth quarter can be a bit unusual. There are a couple of you know, adjustments to our insurance line. We go through an annual actuarial process in the fourth quarter that can move that insurance line. There's some other you know, accrual related items within our benefits program that get looked at by an actuary each year. There can be some adjustments in the past. You know, if we're perfect with our estimates as we move through the year, then those are pretty minimal, and they haven't been overly material in years past.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

You know, for example, last year when you look at the fourth quarter, the insurance and claims line was only 0.9%, and it had been at a run rate of about 1.1%. A little bit of a favorable adjustment, if you will, there. Absent those types of things, nothing else that really comes in that's different from any other period.

Ken Hoexter
Ken Hoexter
Managing Director at BofA

Great. My last one is just, you know, you talked a lot about maybe expansion in terms of service centers and adding doors. Anything you want to highlight on productivity gains in terms of turnover per door or any other room for improvement on expanding capacity with the network? Or is that just doing what you're doing to get the 15%-20% and beyond that you need the additional service centers?

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

Yeah, we're just, I don't think really anything different to add to it. It's just we're building up, you know, anticipating what our growth levels are going to be and trying to ensure that we're building up the capacity within the service center network to make sure that, you know, not only can we handle the growth that may come at us next year, but still maintain this target of 20%-25% excess capacity that we like to have in the system. In the LTL world, it's the doors that really can control the amount of freight that can be processed through the system. We never want our network to be a limiting factor to our growth.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

You know, those service centers are not easy to add, and the additions don't come quick either. You really have to have them out there. It's why it's so important for us to invest, even in periods where you know, you might see market softness. The investments that we made in 2016 and 2019, those were critical to be able to accommodate all the growth opportunities that we're seeing in the present. We just want to make sure that we continue to build out that capacity and just have it, you know, there and ready, as our customers continue to call on us and want to give us more and more of their freight.

Ken Hoexter
Ken Hoexter
Managing Director at BofA

No, I wasn't arguing the need for the additional service centers. I was just wondering if there's anything more you can do to improve productivity on existing centers to gain additional capacity.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

Well, I mean, that's just the density and yield breakdown. As you know, if we keep on average that 20%-25%, just say, you know, every stick of freight that comes through an average service center is gonna drive incremental improvement in the operating ratio to that one particular service center where we may have expanded it two years ago. Certainly the yield performance has got to be there to offset the generalized core cost inflation at that service center level as well.

Greg C. Gantt
President and CEO at Old Dominion Freight Line

You build that out and scale it across 250 facilities while we may be expanding, you know, maybe 15 facilities in any given year, or so you've got a large grouping that have already been expanded and incurred that incremental depreciation, and now we're driving profit improvement at each service center level. That's really what's driven the overall model, is to continue to invest ahead of growth, and then that density and yield contribution drives the bottom line growth faster than the top line.

Ken Hoexter
Ken Hoexter
Managing Director at BofA

Great. Greg, I appreciate the time. Thank you.

Operator

Excuse me. The next question is from Bascome Majors of Susquehanna. Please go ahead.

Bascome Majors
Bascome Majors
Senior Equity Research Analyst at Susquehanna

Yeah. As you mentioned earlier, you increased your door count by 50% while most of the industry was flat or down over the last decade, and clearly that created a lot of value for your customers, employees, and shareholders. I mean, as we look over the next 5 to 10 years, though, it does feel like more of your competitors, though not all of them, are pursuing a growth-oriented approach to the market.

Bascome Majors
Bascome Majors
Senior Equity Research Analyst at Susquehanna

I know we've had a lot of questions on capacity, but can you frame, you know, how big is big enough for OD, whether in terms of tonnage or market share or service centers, however really you want to measure it. When do we get to the point, as you look forward, where that marginal benefit of the growth investment starts to decline more noticeably? Thank you.

Greg C. Gantt
President and CEO at Old Dominion Freight Line

I'll take a shot at the first part of your question, Bascome. I'm not sure that we really look at it like that. You know, how big is big enough? You know, I think it's all based on where we see our needs and, you know, where are they and, you know, what do we need to to make sure we can service our customers as we've committed to them to do. I think that's the key. Where does that take us? How big do we become? I don't know.

Greg C. Gantt
President and CEO at Old Dominion Freight Line

That's not something that we've looked at or focused on. I don't know that that's extremely productive, so I wouldn't say that we really looked at it that way. You know, wherever our needs are, you know, we'll continue to address them.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

You know, down the road where it takes us, I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Bascome Majors
Bascome Majors
Senior Equity Research Analyst at Susquehanna

Thank you for the perspective.

Operator

The next question is from Bruce Chan with Stifel. Please go ahead.

Bruce Chan
Bruce Chan
Director at Stifel

Hey, good morning, everyone and thanks for squeezing me in here. I just want to come back to the labor side of things quickly and some of the headcount increases. Can you maybe give us a little color on where those new hires are coming in as far as the breakdown between drivers and dock labor? You know, just as a follow-up, Adam, you touched on some of the productivity potential, but as you go through that onboarding process, how long does it typically take for you to get those new hires up to full potential? Thank you.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

Yes, you know, the breakdown, obviously, we've got to have both drivers and our platform employees to move the freight. You know, pretty consistent balance with our line haul drivers, our pickup and delivery drivers, especially as we've added new service centers, not only just the general growth that the business has had and then, you know, the platform employees as well. You know, mainly the productive labor employees that are responsible for moving the freight and handling freight for our customers. That's driving the majority of that growth and the headcount.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

You know, it's been something that you know, to say your headcounts up 21%, essentially is pretty meaningful, especially given all the conversations about labor shortages around the country. We're certainly proud of how successful we've been, despite the fact that we said we'd love to continue to hire more, if you will. You know, it's just a balance you know, on the productivity. The biggest learning curve happens on the dock for us. You know, you can't get too overly caught up in one particular metric versus another.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

The most important for us is to make sure that each new employee on the dock understands that their number one priority is to use all the tools and techniques that we have in place to protect our customers' freight. Whether that's the dunnage, the airbags, utilizing the load bars that are in our line haul trailers, everything that really drives that overall value proposition. The claims management is a big part of that, and we continue to have cargo claims ratio at 0.1%-0.2%. That's something that we're really proud of and more motivated that we make sure our employees understand that that is a part of the value equation.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

That's, you know, part of the piece of our yield management success over the years, and a big differentiating factor between us and many of our competitors. You know, there may be a six-month learning curve in place for people to come on to make sure they're effectively preventing claims. Also the other piece of it is maximizing our load factor to ensure that they're utilizing the entire cube. That's our biggest cost element is line haul.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

We want to make sure that they're more focused on those, you know, key factors, if you will, versus just the number of shipments per hour that we might manage on the dock. You know, that gives you opportunity as those new people are now more seasoned.

Adam Satterfield
Adam Satterfield
CFO at Old Dominion Freight Line

You know, certainly that's why we're looking at seeing some of that productivity opportunity as we turn the page into 2022. Certainly we'd love to see some improvement as we finish out the balance of the year. I think that will be a pretty good opportunity for us to drive some further cost improvement into the next year.

Bruce Chan
Bruce Chan
Director at Stifel

Great. Thanks for the color.

Operator

This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Greg Gantt for any closing remarks.

Greg C. Gantt
President and CEO at Old Dominion Freight Line

Well, thank you all today for your participation. We surely appreciate your questions, and please feel free to give us a call if you have anything further. Thanks, and hope you have a great day.

Operator

The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.

Executives
    • Adam Satterfield
      Adam Satterfield
      CFO
    • Drew Anderson
      Drew Anderson
      Senior Director of Product Management
Analysts
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